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Good morning and welcome back to the European and External Relations Committee. Agenda item 2 is a continuation of our inquiry on connecting Scotland. I am delighted that we have a round table of guests with us this morning.
I welcome Elaine Ballantyne, the head of external relations and investor support, economic development, at City of Edinburgh Council; Anil Gupta, the chief officer for communities at the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; Malcolm Leitch, the European officer for the west of Scotland European forum; Joanne Scobie, the European Union officer, policy and partnerships, for the east of Scotland European consortium; and Gillian Walsh, the international officer for Glasgow City Council. Jamie McGrigor, who is sitting next to you, Gillian, has lots of questions for you.
Thank you very much for your written evidence. We have received a huge amount of written evidence for the inquiry, which has been very helpful, and we have many questions. I hope that everyone understands the round-table format. Catch my eye if you want to speak and we will try to keep the conversation as free flowing as possible. I can the see the whites of everybody’s eyes, so it will be easier for me to co-ordinate that.
I will start with an open question on the importance of international engagement to your organisations and, by extension, to Scotland.
10:00
Good morning. City of Edinburgh Council has always taken a very international outlook. Even if we were not taking an international outlook, we would still receive many requests from international delegations, projects and interests. We have a very busy inward agenda.
The areas of work that we are involved in include international relations, projects and activities, which I outlined in my written submission. We are also very active on the EU side through networks such as Eurocities and the applications that we make for partnerships and European funding.
All the council departments have an element of international work, which varies according to resource and subject area. That is manifested most importantly in the number of international visits and delegations that they all receive. The gain is definitely in the exchange of international good practice. Services are open to international good practice and are very good at sharing examples of their own experience of service delivery.
As you are probably aware, local government has a fairly significant role in the implementation of European legislation, particularly in the areas of transport and the environment but also in economic development and in various elements of infrastructure. As a result, local authorities generally are quite concerned about the extent of local discretion in how legislation is implemented and the need for flexibility to achieve the outcomes that the European Parliament wishes to see being delivered across countries affected by the treaty.
We are primarily involved in supporting elected representatives from local government in a variety of fora that operate in the European Union and on the European stage. We have four Committee of the Regions representatives alongside those from the Scottish Parliament. We also have representatives on the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in the Council of Europe and we lobby reasonably actively on the legislative programmes of the European Union. The committee will be aware of the very extended timeframes, which allow us to consult our members through COSLA’s governance structure. As part and parcel of that, we work quite closely with the senior officers of local authorities, who have more on-the-ground experience.
On a broader level, we have responsibilities for some work on matters such as the Covenant of Mayors, which is a network arrangement that responds to climate change issues. We are formally involved as part of the twinning arrangements within the Council of European Municipalities and Regions, which aims to improve and extend arrangements around international aid as well as more sisterly arrangements. We anticipate considerable work around the sustainable development goals into the future.
I will stop there, but I am sure that we will pick up some of those issues later on.
Thank you, convener, for the invitation to submit written evidence and to come along and have a conversation with you and your colleagues this morning.
The west of Scotland European forum is a lean, mean organisation; we do not have vast resources. We try to encourage our member authorities to take a full interest in the range of European issues—we cover only European issues, not wider international issues—that affect how they deliver services to their communities.
We do not look just at funding, although that is important, especially as we have just gone through a process of redefining how European regional cohesion policy will be deployed in the 2014-20 period. That was a major item of work that we undertook collectively. We also look to stimulate involvement in some of the other EU funding programmes, many of which, as the committee will be aware, require transnational partners. We are thinking of some of the aspects of horizon 2020 and the European territorial co-operation programmes that are part-funded through the European regional development fund, and we are doing a range of things to try to stimulate and promote better and more informed participation in those programmes. We understand that it is not solely about funding but is also about policies and legislation originating from the EU, which, as Anil Gupta hinted, have direct impacts on how we arrange and deliver a number of public services.
Our role is to find a niche where there is a regional dimension that impacts on the west of Scotland. One portfolio that we have spent a lot of time on in the past couple of years is the regional aid guidelines that the European Commission has put in place for every policy and funding period. That is the background to the assisted areas review that has taken place over the past couple of years, and it impacts on the extent to which public authorities can support investment that will create jobs in our communities. We handled that important issue, which is not directly to do with EU funding but has had a big impact on what we can do to support sustainable growth and development in our part of Scotland.
Thank you for the invitation to attend the committee and to submit written evidence. I also thank the committee for undertaking an inquiry on connecting Scotland. It has been useful for us to see what our colleagues across the country are doing in terms of twinning initiatives, funding and so on.
ESEC works on a policy and funding basis, so we try to identify a shared European agenda on policies that will have an impact on our local authorities. We also seek to work in partnerships on the transnational funding programmes, as there is a growing realisation of the importance of those programmes. There is a focus on the new Interreg programmes for which we are eligible, and the energy union that was proposed in February will have an impact on our members, so we are seeking to establish how we can shape and influence that policy and ensure that the voice of local authorities is heard. The renewables sector and the oil and gas sector on the east coast mean that energy is hugely important.
We are also seeking to improve our team Scotland approach, so that it is not just individual local authorities or authorities on the east coast that are engaged. We are seeking to engage with our colleagues across the country to identify a shared agenda.
Glasgow City Council is committed to its international agenda and we have a fairly high number of inward delegations to the city. Our situation is similar to that of our colleagues in Edinburgh and, as Elaine Ballantyne suggested, the biggest outcome is the exchange of technical expertise and knowledge.
We also have an extensive twin city programme. Glasgow is twinned with eight cities and, at any given time, links with just over half of them are very active. We try hard to involve as many different sectors of the community as possible in the twin city programme. It is not about the traditional civic, ceremonial side of things. For example, in the past year we have had delegations from learning disabled groups and there have been sporting delegations and cultural and artistic exchanges. We try to involve as many different sectors of the community in Glasgow as we can in our twin city exchanges.
We have an extensive Commonwealth and international development programme that is just over 10 years old. Our primary focus has been on Malawi but we also have projects in South Africa. We are now trying hard to find projects for which we can attract more EU funding. We have lost quite a lot of our staff over the years due to restructuring within the council, so our team is very small. As you know, any application for EU funding is time consuming, but we are now looking more closely at getting such funding, because we have a very limited budget. We try hard to attract sponsorship or funding from other sources to improve our projects, but attracting EU funding is a big focus for us.
The other day, I heard a radio report about Glasgow being commended for its attraction of international business and the impact that its approach has had, right down to taxi drivers knowing the venues, signposting and things like that. Is that a key element?
Absolutely. We work closely with Glasgow City Marketing Bureau, which has had huge success in attracting conferences to the city over the years. That success is due partly to the fact that the bureau works in close partnership with a range of organisations in the city, of which the taxi drivers are a good example. When we held the Commonwealth games last summer, they were part of a huge team—from the volunteers right through to people serving in shops—that welcomed visitors to the city. That partnership approach has been very successful.
For the past two years, we have had a business investment manager who looks solely at inward investment in the city, and they have a small team as well. A lot of Glasgow’s success in attracting conferences, for example, is down to the partnership approach.
Thank you. We move to questions from committee members.
I am interested in talking about the visual arts scene in Glasgow, especially as we talked earlier about Scotland’s reputation for having the best international festival in the world in Edinburgh—that is fairly taken for granted now. The visual arts scene in Glasgow is very strong and I wonder whether more could be done to promote it.
I know that there is an arts festival in Glasgow, but perhaps more could be done along the lines of the Venice biennale. I remember asking Frank McAveety about the same idea a long time ago. It seems to go on but it has never come to anything. The success of the international festival in Edinburgh could be replicated the whole way across the central belt.
Also, what support is there from the Scottish Government and its agencies for developing international cultural links?
I cannot answer for the visual arts sector—it is not my sector—but I can say that the culture programme that ran alongside the Commonwealth games last summer was very successful. It was a good opportunity for us, as a city, to look at what we are doing and how we might expand that.
I cannot answer the question about funding, unfortunately, as it is not my area. However, I can certainly take that back to Glasgow and ask about it.
With good things such as twinning bringing people together, do you have examples of trade links or of business really benefiting from those links? That question is for anybody.
You asked about support from the Scottish Government and its agencies. Scottish local government and the Scottish Government have a joint working arrangement at a member level and we meet roughly three times a year, or every quarter or so, to look at sports, arts and cultural issues. The cabinet secretary turns up to those meetings and we talk about our relationships with bodies such as Creative Scotland. At this stage, we have not taken it further in the direction that you suggest—namely, looking at internationalisation. However, given the Commonwealth games experience last year, the issue of our hosting major spectacular events is just below the surface and I am sure that we will want to have a look at how we can best exploit and develop such opportunities in the future.
On the Scottish Government’s support for initiatives, City of Edinburgh Council will tomorrow launch its incubation base for small and medium-sized enterprises in Shenzhen, in China. That project has been very much endorsed and supported by the first secretary of the Scottish affairs office, who is based in Beijing as part of the Scottish Government. That is a good example of working over a long period, from a very early stage, to develop relations at the governmental level and at the local authority level. Bringing those together can result in a very powerful influence for getting things delivered on the ground.
We see our memorandum of understanding with Shenzhen as part of the Scotland-China plan, and it has been well supported. We launch that base tomorrow, with a number of companies taking up space. We will also offer Shenzhen companies the same opportunity in Edinburgh. It is the first time that we have done that, and the initiative has been well supported.
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Excellent. Hanzala Malik wants to come in with a supplementary before I let Jamie McGrigor back in.
You can let him in while I think of something else.
That is so kind of you, Jamie. [Laughter.]
My question is on the back of the question about Scottish Government support to cities and Anil Gupta’s very good description of what normally happens.
Unfortunately, Glasgow City Council has an in-and-out membership of COSLA. It spends more time out of COSLA than it does in it, so Glasgow probably does not get the full benefit from Anil Gupta and his office. One example of how Glasgow suffers from not getting Scottish Government support is the Glasgow mela. It is the event’s 25th anniversary this year, but there will be only a one-day mela with a few satellite events dotted around the city, which is rubbish. That is not a mela, and nobody should try to convince me otherwise. To have only a one-day mela on the 25th anniversary of the biggest, most successful event in Glasgow just shows the lack of sensitivity in that area.
I am not blaming you, because I know that that is not directly in your area of influence, but I think that, as an international department in the city, you would have benefited from supporting Glasgow Life and Glasgow Sport if the facility was available to you. The fact that Glasgow City Council is not part of COSLA now means that we do not get the benefit from that membership.
I know that the mela event is always very popular in the city, and that a lot of people are disappointed that it is not going to be bigger.
Absolutely. Thank you for that.
Jamie, do you want to finish your line of questioning?
Yes. My next question is on access to European funding, which we have looked into previously in dealing with the horizon 2020 stuff. How easy do you find it to access European funding? Are there difficulties? Is the Scottish Government doing enough to make it easy for local authorities to know what they can access?
Accessing European funding is difficult, as there are approximately 40 different programmes, all of which have different eligibility requirements, budget structures et cetera. Recently, Scotland Europa, along with WOSEF, ESEC and the Scottish Government, developed an EU funding portal, which will act as a one-stop shop with information on all the different funding programmes. It will also include a database of all the previous projects—approximately 4,000—that have been funded by Europe, with details of the different sectors and partners.
Accessing European funding is difficult as there is so much of it and there are so many different requirements, but we hope that the funding portal, which has been developed in collaboration with the Scottish Government, will help to address that.
The west of Scotland European forum also supported the development of the funding portal, which is a very positive move. I see from the “Brussels Bulletin” that the committee will be talking about it in a few minutes’ time. I emphasise, however, that a portal is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for participation in the programmes. To be fully successful, it must be complemented by activities that involve more than just a website, although the portal is very good.
We are very keen to move forward. Indeed, at our forum meeting next week, we will ask the Scottish Government to clarify, now that most of the funding programmes for 2014 to 2020 are in place, how it will work proactively with stakeholders to improve the uptake. The uptake was not poor during the previous period but, as the old school report card said, it “could do better.”
The portal will need to be refreshed on an on-going basis as new projects come on stream with Scottish partners. We need to ensure that the database is up to date so that people know what is being approved in order that they do not duplicate an area of work that has already been covered and waste time on an abortive application.
Picking up on another point that came up in some of the earlier evidence, I note that a lot of the EU transnational programmes are really good, but success rates vary. In some of the Interreg programmes that I was familiar with in the period 2007 to 2013, the success rate was as low as 10 to 15 per cent. That is the reality of a lot of the competitive EU programmes out there.
It takes time and effort to prepare a transnational project, and sometimes it involves having to meet people in their environment. It cannot all be done by email, Skype and so on, however important they are to the EU’s communications compared with when I started working in the field, when the fax was the state-of-the-art technology. Things have got a whole lot better in communications, but sometimes we need to meet potential partners face to face in a room to see whether there is continuity of interest and we can work with them.
Things will not happen just by having a portal. To get the benefits of a worthwhile project requires a significant investment of time, given that the competition for funds in many EU programmes is intense.
You will know that the committee has taken a keen interest in EU funding and how it is disseminated and monitored. The Cabinet Secretary for Culture, Europe and External Affairs will be coming to talk to us about that in a wee while. I remember doing EU funding applications and monitoring forms when they were all on paper, so I feel your pain.
I echo the points that have been made about the competition for European funding and the extent of the brokerage that now needs to be done in partnership working. For that, we need the experts from the service delivery areas and the EU funding experts to combine forces. The key thing here is innovation. The biggest challenge is for a local authority to have the capacity for innovation to ensure that the bids that we spend a year or more working on are as competitive as they can be.
Another challenge is the changes to how the brokerage works across Europe, with what are called lighthouse cities and follower cities, depending on the capacity to lead a project or simply to be a follower. That scenario is changing quickly and the outcome for a local authority relates to its capacity to build innovation and take part in the brokerage.
To be honest, it has to be in-country brokerage. As Malcolm Leitch said, Skype and emails are fine, but the brokerage is so fast and its events are so huge that more than one person is probably needed. That is a challenge for us because we are tight, small teams, but we often need at brokerage meetings a person who works in the particular delivery area as well as a person who can do the European funding and the brokerage.
COSLA has always been concerned about the competitive nature of some of the funding and is very aware of the point that Malcolm Leitch made about the very low success rates, which mean that a considerable amount of resources go in with no result. However, we were pleased to be involved between March 2011 and September 2013 in discussions with the Scottish Government’s EU structural funds high-level group, which tried to simplify some of the processes and ensure that a greater proportion of the total allocation of structural funds came to local government.
The proportion at present is approximately a third, and that is in place until 2020. We are now looking at post-2020 arrangements and we are actively involved with our sister local authority associations at a European level in discussions with the European Commission about what shape the new things should have.
One of my staff members—Serafin Pazos-Vidal, whom the committee might have met—is convener of a working group at the European level, which he may well have told the committee about. That position allows him to have direct access to working group arrangements to try to continue the simplification process. As we move on down the community planning partnership route, we would like to see even more being delegated to the local level so that we are a bit clearer and the processes are more transparent than they have been in the past.
Serafin keeps the committee well briefed on all the work that he is doing and I have contact with him when the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe is on and we are out in Strasbourg, so he keeps me well up to date.
I wonder whether I can open up a wee discussion on part of the discussion that we had with the cabinet secretary earlier. She talked to the committee about “Scotland’s Action Plan for EU Engagement”, which has clear national objectives, but I am interested in how that sort of thing pans out locally.
My colleague here, Mr Leitch, is from the west of Scotland, and I am the MSP for Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley. I am interested in how the benefits of that national strategy work locally, on the ground, for example in Ayrshire. When a Government rethinks its strategy for EU engagement or devises a new strategy, how does it affect you at a local level? How do you implement the strategy locally to ensure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet?
We are involved in fairly active discussions between civil servants, local government and COSLA on how we provide input to strategies and action plans at their conception, rather than just downstream, once they have been drafted. We believe that it is quite important that we have a more active role. Fortunately, we are much more content this time than we have been previously.
Nevertheless, it might be useful to consider the extent to which practice in other parts of Europe that formally involves local authority associations could be reflected better in arrangements in Scotland. Some examples have already been provided to the committee. A lot of them are in Scandinavia and the Netherlands. There are fairly good ties between the committee structures of the Parliaments and the local authority associations, which allow early dialogue to take place. I thought that I would mention that before I talk about the practical side with our member authorities and non-member authorities.
You say that it is a two-way dialogue. Let us say that you are a member of the public in somewhere like Kilmarnock and Irvine Valley and you pick up the strategy and say, “Oh, that’s lovely. What does it mean for us?” In what way do the outcomes of these strategies drift down to local communities? These great initiatives are supported by everyone round the table, but how do the public see them?
A lot of local authorities have their own European strategies or international frameworks, which incorporate the Scottish Government’s broader economic strategies and European objectives. A European Union strategy such as Europe 2020, which is about smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, is very much aligned with what the Scottish Government and local authorities are aiming to achieve.
Many local authorities host workshops and business briefings on subjects such as European funding and how local SMEs and even individuals can access such funds. Those briefings are about raising awareness of the strategies on the ground.
As I state in our written evidence, the committee’s inquiry is extremely timely. In the west of Scotland European forum, we are trying to refresh our strategy. Our chair is very keen that the benefits should drill down from the local authority level to the community level. I think that Willie Coffey hinted at that issue in his question.
A good example of where European engagement can have a significant community impact is the URBACT programme. That programme is not just for large cities; there is no minimum population. Although the name is a sort of self-definition, it is not just for Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen or the other cities in Scotland. The ethos of URBACT is about getting local action groups going and working on the specific topic that is covered by the programme.
There are one or two examples in the written evidence. The one that I am familiar with is the Roma-Net project, which is doing a lot of good work in the Govanhill part of Glasgow. It is a requirement of getting access to URBACT funding that a local action group involving community representatives works in partnership to improve services or address the topic that has been identified by the programme. It is a generic requirement of all URBACT projects that they must have that local community dimension.
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The Scottish Government is talking about encouraging innovation, opportunity and growth and all those worthy things. How do local folk see whether that is actually getting done? At the end of next year or the year after, if local folk come to ask folk like us, “What did you do about that? What were the benefits and what did we get out of it?”, what do we tell them? How do we articulate it? Who reports to whom about the success or otherwise of those wonderful initiatives? Where do we see that? Who do you report to?
The Scottish Government recently compiled its national reform programme and its EU action plan and consulted different stakeholders, including local authorities, asking for positive case studies. Quite a few were submitted on, for example, the structural funds and Interreg projects.
It can be challenging to communicate to the local level, especially as there is such scepticism about Europe at the moment. It can be challenging getting to the right people or even getting people from the community on to local action groups for URBACT, LEADER or other programmes. If there has been a successful project, the message to make the community aware that the funding filtered down from Europe is sometimes lost.
The message about media approaches to Europe is certainly in Malcolm Leitch’s submission. The committee has spoken about how we better articulate the benefits that we share that come from the European Union. We are not very good at sharing information on those benefits and we need to be—collectively—better at doing it. I am interested in your views on how to lift that up and make the information more accessible to the public so that they can see what is going on in their communities in an easy-to-read and easy-to-understand fashion.
Jamie, do you have a supplementary question on that point?
Yes. I note from the written evidence that COSLA is responsible for leading Scottish local authorities in their policy making on the European Union, which is fine. Going back to the point that Joanne Scobie made about small and medium-sized enterprises and individuals who want to seek European funding, I think that there is a difficulty here. In many ways, this is part of where Euroscepticism stems from. They see Europe as a huge curtain with vast strands that are difficult to pull apart.
Joanne Scobie put her finger on it when she said that there is a difficulty with people accessing European funding. Could COSLA do something to make the portals through which people can get European money more obvious to businesses and individuals who want to develop enterprises for the benefit of industry and to create jobs and livelihoods?
One of the things that COSLA has responsibility for is the central resource that is available to business gateway, which supports the SMEs. It has been a while since I have been directly involved in that. Malcolm Leitch, who has been involved in SLAED—the Scottish local authorities economic development group—can respond to that. There is a portal website where a lot of information is available, including on apps for phones and the like. That gives a wealth of information about funding opportunities, backed up by direct contact with local economic development officers. There are quite a few pointers there about where to go for funding.
Similarly, I remember that some time ago, when we were involved in the better regulation initiative and the services directive, we tried to break up into chunks that would be useful and meaningful to SMEs the information about the opportunities that they were going to get under the services directive to work outwith Scotland, and we also made sure that local authorities complied with their own requirements to ease the processes. However, that is not my area of expertise any more.
Gillian, do you want to come in on that?
It was mentioned that people do not know what Europe does for them. When we encourage our groups and organisations to apply for EU funding, there is no shortage of information out there for them. As Joanne Scobie said, the sheer bulk of the information about where people should go is the issue. It is, as Elaine Ballantyne said, down to capacity a lot of the time.
If we asked the average Glaswegian how many twin cities Glasgow has, they probably could not answer. Perhaps that is down to us, too. When people, including young people, get involved in European projects and they see the benefits, including for their children, they definitely think that Europe is a good thing. However, those who are not active in that work area probably do not know what Europe does for them.
Mr Leitch, will you give us a bit of your insight?
I will, since Anil Gupta has put the spotlight on me. One of my roles is as SLAED’s European funding spokesperson. We have certainly been working hard over the past couple of years on what we spend on small business support through what I would call our domestic European regional development fund, which is the point that our colleague was making.
Bearing in mind that a key pillar of the refreshed economic strategy is internationalisation, a key driver of our ERDF programme for supporting small businesses across Scotland—in the Highlands and the Lowlands—is to improve the internationalisation of our SME base in Scotland. By and large, the general picture is one of working with companies with growth potential. We are not using our limited European resources on start-up companies—that is done through the core business gateway offer. Instead, we are trying to work with companies with growth potential. One of the main ways in which a company can grow is by internationalising its market. That part of the Government’s refreshed economic strategy is woven right through the interventions that are done with ERDF support by the enterprise agencies and by local government through the business gateway network.
The European Commission is sometimes paranoid about the need for publicity for the funding. Indeed, we must ensure that, when a company gets support from a European funding programme, it is aware of that. Most of the support that SMEs can access does not come through direct application for European funds; it comes from a public sector programme that is delivered by, in this case, local authorities through the business gateway or through the enterprise agencies. When we give a grant, consultancy support or business advice to firms, it is our responsibility to ensure that the European dimension is up front and that it is obvious that the support is part financed by European funds. We are audited on that much more these days. That is very much to the fore.
I hope that that answers some of Jamie McGrigor’s questions.
I will give a couple of examples of how we have brought SMEs and the company base into our European-funded projects. Raising awareness is probably best done by engaging people directly and showing them how they can get involved. Our Interreg programme, which was the largest in the north-west Europe programme, brought in the universities—the academia side—and small and medium-sized enterprises in the city to look at innovation. The programme was called open innovation. The idea was that, by sharing, opportunities arise. It was very successful, and we are ready to bid again with those partners.
Although, as I have indicated, some of the new European funding programmes are complex and highly competitive, they allow us to bring in the private sector in a way that we were never allowed to do before. Innovative companies that are able to provide advanced technology can sit at the table and be part of the project.
Those are two examples from our side on bringing in the business sector and the ability to publicise the opportunity, using a project’s outcomes and how we got from A to B on it.
Mr Coffey, have you completed your line of questioning?
Yes—that is super, thank you.
Willie Coffey has asked an important question. I agree that all the strands must be pulled together centrally in order to make a national report. So many of our cities are twinned with other cities around the world. We need to share that information more freely. We must share not only the successes but the failures, so that we do not make the same mistakes. There is no point in reinventing the wheel. With regard to applying for funding, that information needs to be shared once the application has been successful or has failed, so that people know what to do and what not to do.
Those elements are good, and perhaps the Scottish Government could come up with a solution that involves it creating an agency or asking an existing agency to pull all of that together. Nationally, we should have that. Also, because things move so fast, authorities should be able to share information with each other online, and annual reports can be put online for ordinary individuals to see.
Gillian Walsh is right that citizens will not normally know how many cities their city is twinned with and what activities go on. Her written submission is extensive, but it did not include the fact that, last year, for example, a 13-strong delegation went from Glasgow to Lahore, which resulted, a few days ago, in a charitable donation of £50,000 to allow two twinned hospitals to work together. That happened because of the twinning. A lot of initiatives happen, but not all of them go through the council, which is a shame, because the council has supported the twinning. There are good news stories that we need to share with people.
People are answerable to their own authorities, because that is where the responsibility is. However, sharing is important, and I think that we should think about how we share, so that we can all benefit from each other.
On the sharing of information, COSLA and the Improvement Service have a number of communities of practice, as we call them, which are intended to improve how people work by highlighting examples of good practice and, unfortunately, occasional examples of poorer practice. Examples can be uploaded to the knowledge hub, which is a website that is accessible to officers who deal with those policy areas. I understand that that is the case for broad European areas of policy. The role of organisations such as SLAED is key in providing a cross-council perspective on what is going on. A fair bit of the co-ordination happens at a local authority level. What might be being missed out on a little is how we make sense of the work of individual local authorities, and local authorities collectively, as it integrates with the broader Scottish work that is carried out by other agencies. That narrative is possibly missing.
As I read the submissions, I was struck by the connections that Scottish towns have internationally. I was not aware of most of them before. Some of the twinning links to towns, cities and regions in the European Union are 70 years old, or even older. If we were to look at the locations on a map, we would see that we have connections with almost every country in the world, including Russia, Pakistan, South Africa, Australia, Canada and the United States of America. I wonder whether that kind of visual representation could be produced, so that we can see where we are linked to across the world.
I am a visual person, so that would be interesting to see. We are developing a new way of doing committee reports, and that might be something that we could consider.
Would anyone like to comment on the importance of school trips and external school activities, and what benefits and problems there might be in that regard?
School partnerships are a huge part of the twin city programme. We have a dedicated international education officer. We are keen for our young people to get involved in twin city exchanges, particularly those who would not traditionally get involved. Of course, the high flyers get involved, but we try hard to attract people who have perhaps never been abroad or who would never in a million years think that it is something for them. It is a lot of work to get them ready for a visit, but the benefits are huge. There are obvious benefits such as self-esteem and confidence building. We have seen massive changes in people’s outcomes, particularly among young people from seriously deprived backgrounds. For us, the educational exchanges are a really important part of the twin city programme.
10:45
I echo what Gillian Walsh has said. It is a matter of engaging people at a young age in those established relations. In both cities, there is almost a protective framework, and the equivalents know exactly what to do when people land in the city, how to take care of them and how to approach the opportunities that could arise during that short visit. It can be absolutely life changing. There is a huge amount of interest from cities to engage with us in schools.
If that cannot be done through schools, it can sometimes be done through youth groups, sport and other areas of youth activity, and we are keen to consider employability programmes, too. I absolutely endorse what has been said about that.
What impact does the panel think that could have in encouraging children to learn more languages? Does it assist with that, or does it make no real difference?
It would
make a huge difference. One of our most successful twin city partnerships in Europe has been with Nuremberg. Language is never an issue there, because our German colleagues speak very good English. Our French partners in Marseille prefer to speak French, so it can be more of an issue there. Our Italian partners are the same—they prefer to speak Italian.
Some of the cultural exchange is missing when our young people do not have the language. Young people always find something in common to communicate with one other, so they always manage to get on but, if our young people are going to another city, we try hard to get them a very basic grounding in the language, even if it is just to say, “Hello,” “How are you?” “My name is,” and so on. It would make a big difference if we could encourage more language learning in schools.
Some of the European funded programmes encourage that element of learning languages. We had some funding under the Leonardo programme for a short exchange between economic development officers in Edinburgh and our twin city of Munich. It was a very small grant, but it was enough to allow six people each way to spend two weeks with their colleagues in the other departments. As part of that, they had to undertake a period of language learning. It was not advanced German, but it was enough for them to be able to land with confidence. Everybody enjoyed that, and many of those involved have continued to work on the language. That is a good example of European funded support for that kind of initiative.
I notice from the written evidence that the Bavarians said that their natural friendly countries, so to speak, are the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland. Presumably, that goes back in history to the Austro-Hungarian empire. From local authorities’ point of view, how do you work out who to twin with? I am taking England out of the equation for the time being, but who are the natural neighbours for Scotland?
At European level, there is a structure available through the Council of European Municipalities and Regions—the CEMR—which acts as a matchmaking arrangement. It lists what the different partners are offering and what they are looking for. It is almost like an online dating arrangement. There are materials available for people who are proactively looking to form links and who are looking for others who could benefit.
Nowadays, some of that is more targeted at the international development range of the spectrum, for which there is a slightly different culture in mainland Europe, with local authorities more often having direct access to funding for that sort of work on a continual basis. That helps to ensure long-term relationships through twinning arrangements and the transfer of skills and knowledge between local authorities, which are often in the vanguard of developmental work. That is just the formal EU aspect.
To go back to a previous point, language learning certainly is invaluable. In our evidence we have given several examples of educational exchanges for language purposes but also for skills purposes.
To go back to another point, exchanges such as Erasmus are a great opportunity to introduce young people at an early age to the European Union and the benefits that it can bring. If we explain what the European Union does and its benefits to young people at that age, it will set them up to have less of the ingrained Euroscepticism that some older people might have.
Anne McTaggart will begin a new line of questioning.
Are we using the success stories of individual entrepreneurs who have used European funding? Have we created a mentoring scheme that can be tapped into?
I can answer in part. You are right—once people start thinking of entering the thickets of European funding, good case studies and good examples make it much more real for them. On the business innovation side, Elaine Ballantyne earlier referred to an excellent project that City of Edinburgh Council led on inspiring open innovation. Whether it is in the field of education, as has been talked about, or in the field of innovation entrepreneurship, having role models and good case studies is absolutely the right way to get across to people the positive benefits of European and international engagement, as they are much more real to people than even the best website or Facebook page. That is very important.
Things like the funding portal are excellent in filling out a skeleton, but it is the personal or organisational examples that give the flesh to the body.
I can add to that. Although it is not necessarily within the EU context, we work with businesses and entrepreneurs in the city on our international projects. They help by pooling resources—offering the opportunity to use premises when we have international delegations coming into the city, for example—but also by taking part in showcasing the city internationally, not necessarily for export-related reasons, but, for example, to showcase the technology that we have in the city or the strength of financial services. We work closely with the different sectors in the city. They often talk alongside us about the benefits of public-private partnership working.
That is all I wanted to ask about. I also agree with you, convener, that it would be far easier if we could see coming to fruition one of Joanne Scobie’s suggestions about visualising how we market, what we actually do and how many countries we do it in.
I have just one question for the witnesses. From your perspective, what one thing do you think could improve our engagement internationally?
That is an easy one for me—language learning.
I agree that languages are hugely important. It is also important to share knowledge about what each of us is doing. As I said before, there are some great case studies in the written evidence that I was not aware of before. Sharing knowledge and perhaps collaborating more would be my answer.
I will not second but third the argument for languages. Our less sophisticated level of language skills compared with those of other countries limits our pool of potential partners. People are pulled to Scandinavia, the Netherlands and northern Europe as a result. Language skills have never been an issue in Glasgow’s long-standing link with Nuremberg, but we should not expect everyone to be able to conduct their business discussions in English. A much broader base of language skills in Scottish organisations and communities would unlock much more potential.
I echo Joanne Scobie’s point about information exchange and understanding better how other cultures approach problems that are similar to ours.
To that end, we often encourage exchanges at a local authority association level—delegations come to visit us and member authorities. The visitors are largely Scandinavian. We have had Finnish tax experts look at council tax and provide input to the commission on local financing, and we have had submissions from Danish and Dutch people—I cannot remember who else—on our commission to strengthen local democracy. Icelandic people come and feel a little bit sorry that although they are very affected by the EU they are not quite in it—there is a salutary lesson in that about what might happen if we were just a passive member of the European regulatory environment.
There is the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, and we had its monitoring report last year, which provided an overview of how well we comply with the European Charter of Local Self-Government—you are probably aware that there is still work to be done.
Those sorts of things are very important in that they prevent us from being insular. We can learn from other EU member states and we can give them examples of how we work here. Our community planning partnership arrangements are probably further advanced than those in many other countries, although a lot of them are moving slowly in our direction. International engagement is a two-way process.
I recommend playing to our strengths and building up the niche opportunities that distinct local authority areas and regions have. We should look at what we at local level can bring to the Scottish strategy agenda. We can all contribute in particular areas. Having more awareness of those things and building them into the early engagements and relationship building at governmental level will stand us in good stead, in terms of the delivery of the strategy.
Does that answer your question, Adam?
It does indeed.
We have talked about how decisions on twinning cities are made. One thing that has not been mentioned is the participation of councillors. I went through a couple of twinning processes as a councillor and I know that sometimes twinnings are driven by either the Lord Provost or the chair of development and regeneration services committee. They come up with a twinning suggestion, based on various reasons: there might be commercial or cultural links, or there might be a large diaspora that wishes the twinning to take place. There are a number of reasons why international twinnings take place.
If and when a twinning takes place, people should not just sign the agreement and then put the forms away and forget about it. The whole point of a twinning is to make the relationship work. That is the important element in any twinning, whether internationally or within Europe. We would benefit from remembering that.
I went to one twinned city, which was Havana in Cuba. I was shocked that it was twinned with more than 50 cities. I said to myself, “How in hell does it keep track of all those twinnings and work with those cities?” Sometimes people can be overzealous and have far too many twinnings. I understand that Cuba was isolated for a period, and other countries wanted the people there to feel that they were part and parcel of the human race, but generally twinnings should be limited to a manageable number so that they are effective.
11:00
We are twinned with eight cities and there were a myriad of reasons for twinning with them. We tried really hard to ensure that they were all included in our twin city programme.
In some circles, twinning is now regarded as a bit old-fashioned. However, in our project with South Africa we are forming a technical partnership with its municipalities for the duration of the project. When that technical partnership comes to its natural end we will look at it again. The notion of twinning is still very important.
Our twinning relationship with Munich is 60 years old and our twinning with Florence is 50 years old. We have a range of projects happening with those cities and have had ever since the first day. It is hard work to keep those relationships going with limited resources: they take a lot of time and patience, and they require capacity to be built across the sectors and relationships to be built within the cities as well as between them.
We have many partnerships for Europe-funded projects and other distinct pieces of work such as technical partnerships, like the one that Gillian Walsh talked about. When a twinned city relationship is active and dynamic and both cities wish to continue it, it is the perfect relationship. There are many others that are project based. You can bring new things into existing twinnings, perhaps from experience of working in other partnership arrangements. They evolve all the time. As Hanzala Malik said, it is tricky to keep them alive and evaluate them, but there are certain ways to do that in terms of the level of engagement there is across both cities.
What I wrote when I rounded off my written evidence echoes directly a point that Hanzala Malik made. Commitment by senior management and elected members, whether in the forum of the Scottish Parliament or local authorities, is absolutely critical to the success of European and international work. It is a discretionary part of local government; we have no statutory obligation to do twinning or engage with European projects. At a time when budgets are under severe pressure, senior management and elected member support is absolutely critical to making such things happen on the ground, in realistic terms, as Mr Malik said.
On that point of information—good information at that—I will thank you all for giving up your time, energy, written evidence and oral evidence, which have been extremely helpful. I hope that you will keep track of the inquiry. We will be looking for some visual aids to help us along.
We will have a brief suspension.
11:03 Meeting suspended.Next
Annual Report